The Leach Pottery
6 pm, Thursday, June 24, 2010
Influx Room, Regis Center for Art
University of Minnesota
Admission: FREE

A special screening ofThe Leach Pottery, narrated by Warren MacKenzie, and restored and released by Canadian filmmaker Marty Gross.

This film, given to the filmmaker by Bernard Leach and his wife Janet Darnell Leach in 1976, records virtually every aspect of pottery making at the Leach Pottery. It has been restored and edited by Marty Gross, a filmmaker noted for his films of Japanese potters and potteries. Gross worked with Warren MacKenzie to provide narration for the film, as well as to add footage shot by MacKenzie when he was in residence at the Leach Pottery in 1952.

Marty Gross and Warren MacKenzie will be present for the event. Following the screening (the film is about 50 minutes), they will discuss the history and ideas in the films with each other and with the audience.

Marty Gross is a ceramics enthusiast who has brought that knowledge and passion to the public through films about ceramics and their makers, as well as through the Marty Gross Studio, a private art school for children in Toronto, founded in 1971. He has made and restored numerous films about Japanese craft, culture and history, including documentaries about the theater form bunraku, and the pottery villages of Onda and Koishibara on the island of Kyushu, and of Mashiko, where Hamada and Shimaoka lived and worked.

Warren MacKenzie worked at the Leach Pottery from 1949 to 1952, and then returned to Minnesota to teach at the University of Minnesota. While he taught at the University and after his retirement, he made and continues to make thousands of pots every year, which he intends to be used in the daily acts of serving and eating food—or containing flowers or paper clips and pencils. His pots may be found at Northern Clay Center, as well as in cupboards and display vitrines around the world.